“…Tower Master. No matter how I think about it, letting the divine beast slip through our fingers like that was far too costly.”
The hour before dawn.
On the road back to the Mage Tower, Basen—who had kept silent the entire way—could no longer hold back the disappointment gnawing at him and finally let it show.
Discovering a divine beast inside the Imperial Palace had been nothing short of miraculous.
After years of desperate searching, a clue had finally appeared right before their eyes, close enough to grasp…
And then it had slipped away.
“I truly cannot understand what you’re thinking, Tower Master.”
Basen genuinely could not.
How many years had they spent rolling through the dirt, suffering through one miserable ordeal after another?
Yet no matter what was said beside him, Sion looked perfectly calm.
He glanced at the anxious Basen and gave a light shrug.
“I’m just as disappointed as you are. But what can we do? A witness appeared, which means… withdrawing was the only option for now.”
On top of that, Riersha Arachrene had made it clear she intended to protect the divine beast. There had been no way to take it by force.
Causing a scene there would have been far worse than simply pulling back.
“What if this really does… come back to bury us completely? What then?”
“No use worrying ahead of time. The one who least wants that secret revealed is the Pope himself.”
If the secret that the goddess Rafella’s blessing had been lost ever came to light, the first person backed into a corner would be the Pope. The temple would crumble, and his position along with it.
“In a roundabout way, we’re benefiting from the temple’s silence as well.”
“…That’s an extraordinarily optimistic interpretation, sir.”
“Bringing the divine beast back right now would have caused problems anyway. You saw it yourself. That temperament.”
“…”
Basen blinked back something close to tears and examined his disheveled appearance. The back of his head still smarted from being smacked repeatedly by two tiny paws. The divine beast’s temper, small as it was, had been absolutely formidable.
“It inherited its owner’s personality perfectly.”
Sion shook his head slowly.
Then the mood shifted, settling into something quieter and more serious.
They had been exchanging words with an almost casual ease, but the situation was anything but.
Basen asked, his expression curious.
“So then—how would one go about destroying that control sigil?”
“You can’t.”
“…Pardon?”
“The sigil was designed from the start to grow stronger as the divine beast grows. Otherwise, how could it possibly hold a divine beast in check?”
“Then we’re in serious trouble!”
Because if no one could destroy the sigil, it meant no one ever could.
The divine power of a fully matured divine beast was on a scale no human being could approach.
The best course of action was to destroy the sigil as early as possible, while the divine beast was still young.
But if that was impossible, there was one other way.
Namely…
“The fact that the sigil is still functioning means… the sorcerer who made it is still alive.”
The method was to hunt down the sorcerer who had crafted the sigil directly and cut off his life.
The man Sion had been searching for across long years.
The one said to be the most skilled practitioner of dark magic among all the Senuarts in recorded history.
That was the man.
It was the reason Sion had been forced to traverse the entire continent in pursuit of him. It was also the decisive reason the temple had assigned someone to shadow Sion.
Both the Mage Tower and the temple were searching for that man, each for their own purposes.
“But we’ve scoured the entire continent and still haven’t found him.”
Basen’s expression darkened.
How were they supposed to find someone who had eluded them for so long?
And even if they caught a lead, what came after was another problem entirely. They would be lucky if they didn’t end up on the receiving end of something far worse.
But Sion gave a dry smile and shrugged.
“The Staff of the Draconic Serpent that man used isn’t in the Imperial Palace anymore. I had it quietly moved… somewhere.”
“Yes. The problem is that we no longer know where that staff ended up, either.”
“…”
“That auction house was the most likely place it surfaced…”
But a temple operative had been present, and the opportunity had been lost.
That alone was painful enough—and now they had lost the divine beast on top of it.
Basen’s eyes sharpened. Sion, pricked in every sore spot one by one, quietly looked away.
“Regardless, what’s certain is that the man is lurking somewhere near the Imperial Palace.”
“How can you be sure of that? I would never do such a thing in his position.”
With both the Mage Tower and the temple actively hunting him, it made no rational sense to linger anywhere near that area.
But Sion smiled with quiet certainty.
“Adrian Declair is the proof. You saw it yourself, didn’t you?”
“Ah.”
Basen nodded as the memory returned.
Isierd Declair had shaken hands with Adrian, and yet the dark magic binding Adrian Declair had not broken.
That was precisely why Sion had attended the party in person tonight—to read the situation and understand what had gone wrong.
“It wasn’t the same dark magic I’d seen before. It was something far more terrible. A curse that exacts a price.”
“…You mean the kind of dark magic that demands a sacrifice in return?”
“Yes.”
What that price was remained unknown—but Adrian Declair had crossed a river from which there was no return.
Sion thought of the divine beast he had glimpsed inside the Imperial Palace.
It was definitely a fox divine beast.
The fox divine beast, recorded as the creature the goddess Rafella cherished above all others.
And its power was…
…Rafella has drawn her blade.
A chill ran down Sion’s spine.
In all of recorded history, a fox divine beast had been born only once before.
And even then, countless sacrifices had followed.
Surely this fox divine beast also carried a mission bestowed by Rafella…
They needed to resolve things before the divine beast reached maturity and began to act.
“We don’t need to exhaust ourselves. When the time comes, that man will reveal himself first. …And after that…”
“What, are you going to fight him?”
Basen asked with disbelief plain on his face.
Sion smiled brightly.
“No. I’m scared.”
“…”
“I’d like to borrow our young lady’s abilities, but it seems I’ve already gotten on her bad side… Even if I ask for help, I’m not sure she’d give it.”
If only he’d known it would come to this—he should have just handed over the divine beast the moment she asked, instead of making a fuss.
Sion clicked his tongue and ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up.
“Anyway, I’m exhausted. I need to sleep.”
By the time they reached the Mage Tower, the sun had fully risen over the horizon.
⁂
Riersha had not slept a single moment, and morning found her exactly as the night had left her.
She’d had to stay awake through the entire small hours before dawn—because once daylight came, they could no longer remain in the Imperial Palace, and she’d needed to hear every word the divine beast had to say before leaving.
Riersha climbed into the carriage, her head drooping with drowsiness.
Sona looked as though she badly wanted to ask what had kept her up all night, but she read the atmosphere and chose to hold her tongue.
It wasn’t only Riersha who looked haggard—every one of the Arachrene siblings wore the same pale, worn expression.
“…What happened last night?” Oberon asked quietly.
Sona shook her head, indicating she had no idea either.
“I don’t know. …She didn’t come back to the room at all. None of the others did either, so I assume they were all together, but…”
“All the way through until morning?”
Oberon furrowed his brow.
But Sona confirmed it with a small shrug.
“By the way—what is that? I don’t remember us packing anything like that when we left the Arachrene estate.”
“I’m not sure either. But it must be very important. …It was the only thing she went back to gather herself, out of everything in the room.”
Even as Riersha’s head bobbed with drowsiness, her hand was wrapped tightly around a communication crystal orb that none of them had seen before.
Oberon seemed to be thinking something over, then murmured,
“Come to think of it, temple priests have been moving through the streets since early this morning.”
“Have they?”
“They appeared to be searching for something.”
“I wonder… I was inside the palace the whole time, so I wouldn’t know.”
It seemed the full details would have to wait until Riersha woke up.
The two of them could piece together only so much: something had happened inside the Imperial Palace, and second—
Something had happened to the temple as well.
That much, and nothing more.
“We’re off, then!”
The Arachrene family’s carriage, fully prepared to depart from the Imperial Palace gates, began to move slowly forward.
